


watch your tides go away

by technorat



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Drowning, Little Mermaid Elements, M/M, Mer!Kylo, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 04:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18612925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/technorat/pseuds/technorat
Summary: Humans have always drowned their sacrifices to appease the Sea King Snoke.Hux is no ordinary sacrifice.





	watch your tides go away

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for [niibeth](https://niibeth.tumblr.com) !! fic is based on fanart you can find [here](https://twitter.com/Kortesku/status/1107379749960208390)
> 
> special thanks to [rabidcur](https://twitter.com/rabidcur) for beta-ing this!!
> 
> you can find me [here](http://gaygalaxyguy.tumblr.com) on tumblr and you can find me [here](https://twitter.com/gay_galaxy_guy) on twitter.

  
  


Usually, the humans would drown one of their own as tribute to Sea King Snoke, wrapping their sacrifice in finery, draping them with weighty pouches of silver and gold. If the human failed to sink into the deep, the others would use iron ankle weights to burden their sacrifice further.

But this one is different.

It gives him pause.

The human is sinking, completely bare. Pinky flesh is quickly losing color, limbs all strange and pliant.

Kylo approaches, holding onto his spear tightly.

He has heard all the stories about humans: about their greed and their savagery, about their tricks.

But this human is nude and cannot hide a thing, not even their own frailty. They continue to sink, head down, their arms outstretched. Around them, their red hair flares like a volcanic vein.

Kylo swims closer, angling himself to get a better look at the human’s face. Snoke had always called humans the ugliest creatures imaginable, but this particular one did not appear so foul. 

But they were dying, unable to pull oxygen from the waters that surrounds them.

Letting the human die now would not satisfy the questions that bubbled inside of him, so Kylo pulls an oxygen net from where he’d tied it around his waist and carefully wraps it around the human.

From there, it is a simple thing to lug the human away to his pod’s hoard, like so much treasure.

*

 

Hux wakes with a start, shivering and chilled to his core. He doesn’t quite remember falling asleep.

He sits up, finding himself nude, gooseflesh prickling his arms. He blinks sluggishly, looking around the utter trash heap he’s found himself in. The floor is steel and ice beneath him, frighteningly smooth to the touch, as if it had been worn away by time. Armor and heaps of jewelry are stacked haphazardly, without a care for how it is actually worn. Rugs and scarves are hung from the walls, beautiful, but no distinction between practicalities and artistry. Nothing makes sense.

Hux comes to his feet, legs weak beneath him.

“Hello,” says another voice, one belonging to a man. Deep, sharp, dangerous.

Hux falls right back down when he sees it’s not another human he’s speaking to, but a mer.

His upper half looks much like any of Hux’s ill advised flings. Muscular, with long dark hair. His nose is crooked, like it had been broken and fixed badly. When the mer smiles, he reveals a set of needle sharp teeth. The mer is perched, just outside of dark water, sprawled along metal, not at all bothered by the temperature, dark scales reflecting and refracting light from beneath the wrappings of dark cloth.

Hux curls himself up, hiding his modesty as best as he can. “Where am I?” he demands. “Who are you?”

The mer smiles brightly, amusement glittering in dark eyes. “I’m Kylo. You drowned.” The mer is cruel, like all of his kind. Each word is like a knife, with no care for how they hurt.

Hux shakes his head. “Drowned?” he can’t help but repeat. He scowls, shaking his head. He can’t remember that—can’t remember it at all. He wraps his arms around his knees, tucking his chin on top. “I didn’t drown.”

“No?” Kylo says with a bark of laughter. “It looked that way to me. Last I checked, humans can’t breathe underwater.”

Hux blinks. He remembers rushing cold, cold, cold all around him--and the glint of something bright. He scowls and turns away from the mer. “You have to let me go,” he says. He can’t stay here. He  _ can’t _ .

Kylo laughs again and now Hux can place the sound. The mer’s laughter sounds like the barks of seals, but only more sinister. The mer around Arkanis have been known to attack human ships and plunder all inside. “Go? Be my guest,” Kylo says, gesturing to the room they find themselves in with his strange webbed fingers. Little of it is above water.

He could surely not survive a swim back to the surface.

Hux scoffs and scowls, but refuses to talk again.

The mer doesn’t see the rejection for what it is and crawls along his belly, to get closer to Hux. Kylo reaches out and prods at Hux’s leg with an ice cold hand. His nails are black and sharp, filed into points. “So what are you?” Kylo asks.

“A human,” Hux says crossly. “Can’t you tell?”

Kylo’s hand drops away. “But what kind? Man? Woman? Other?”

He can’t help but scrunch his nose in distaste. “I’m a  _ man _ ,” Hux says, a little outraged at even having to be asked that. He curls further into himself, to keep whatever warmth left in him. “My name is  _ Hux.  _ You will have to let me go.”

He remembers hands, pulling away his coat, the one thing his mother had been allowed to give him. Those same hands locking the coat in a trunk and tossing it out of the ship.

But after? He can’t say what happened next.

“And why is that?” Kylo asks. “Hux.” It’s as if Kylo is tasting his name, serrated teeth clicking together.

Hux looks at him, face lit up by the anger that surges up beneath his skin. “Because if you do not, then I will die.”

That certainly catches Kylo’s attention. The mer cocks his head. “Die?” he asks. “But you are young and perfectly healthy.”

“How could you possibly tell that if you couldn’t even tell that I was a man?” Hux asks bitterly.

“You smell healthy enough,” Kylo says, punctuating his words with a loud sniff. 

“That’s disgusting,” Hux says.

“Then don’t lie to me.” Kylo slaps his tail against the metal floor. He finds some strange helmet and pulls it over his head before throwing himself into the ocean’s depths.

Only when he’s gone does Hux let out a long, drawn out sigh.

He had not been lying.

*

Kylo does not let his human’s words bother him.

The cycles go on. Kylo brings back some of his scavenges, the treasures from sunken ships he spends his days exploring. Precious gems, jewelry, combs carved from bone—all those treasures that Snoke has deigned not to take.

Hux clothed himself in the woven fabric Kylo used for decoration. It served to make him prettier, dressed in black and silver and gold, patterns swirling and rippling like the currents that surround them. Hux tells Kylo again and again to let him go.

And Kylo poses the question over and over.  _ Why had Hux been sacrificed? Naked and offering no gifts. _

They spend a remarkable amount of time ignoring each other.

“I’ve brought you food,” Kylo says, pushing forth several sealed cans of human food. He’d found out, after two days of trying to feed Hux the best of his catch, that humans cannot— _ or should not? _ —eat fish raw. So, he’s kept an eye out for the strange human foods.

Hux snatches a can and then retreats back beneath the layers and layers of fabric. He opens it and begins to eat, pulling strange, brightly colored fruits out from an artificially sweet broth. He eats slowly, not looking at Kylo once.

Kylo eats his own food, grinding down the small bones of the fish he’d caught. He does not understand how humans get their sustenance from such strange things.

Hux eats little, Kylo learns. Perhaps half of a single can, putting the rest aside, beneath a pile of black burlap. (Kylo pretends not to see Hux hide an unopened can. He, of all people, understands the necessity of a hoard, but did not think humans kept them, especially not hoards of food.)

“Where did you come from?” Kylo asks him.

Hux snorts. “If I tell you, will you bring me back home?”

Kylo laughs. “Are you trying to trick me?” Humans are so foolish.

“If I answer one of your questions, will you answer one of mine?” Hux says, cautiously.

Kylo blinks, taken aback by the question. Then he smiles wider. “Sure,” he says, humoring his human. “That’s one question of yours I’ve answered, so you must answer one of mine.”

“That isn’t fair,” Hux hisses, his face scrunching up with anger.

“No? A question for a question you said,” Kylo says. “You didn’t specify when this agreement would begin.”

“You’re a real bastard,” Hux says, vitriol bright and hot in his words.

“So my question,” Kylo says, dragging himself ever closer. “Where is the rest of your people’s gift?”

Hux rolls his eyes. “You don’t honestly believe we sacrifice to you… whatever you are. I simply drowned.”

“With no clothes on?” Kylo teases, tugging at one of the fabric scraps.

“It’s best to swim with none on,” Hux answers. “Why are you keeping me?”

“You’re interesting. Filled with so many mysteries.” Kylo blinks slowly, letting a grin spread across his pale face. “And you’re pretty.”

Red creeps across Hux’s cheeks. He turns away. 

“If you were swimming,” Kylo says, “you must have had a destination in mind. What were you doing? Swimming at night? Humans can’t see well in the dark, you silly little thing.”

“I was trying to retrieve something some men stole from me,” Hux says. “What will you do with me when you get bored?”

“Hmmm…” Kylo leans forwards, resting his chin against his scale lined arms. “Don’t let me get bored, and you won’t have to find out.”

Hux sits up, pulling further away from Kylo, until his back touches the cool, metal wall. He looks a little ill, but just for a moment, before hiding any of his emotions behind a fierce scowl.

“No more questions then?” Kylo can’t help but snark.

He receives no response.

He snorts and plucks his helmet from the floor, pulling on over his head. With a splash, he leaves his hoard and his greatest treasure behind.

*

The days go on and on, or so Hux thinks. It’s hard to tell how much time is passing from the inside of the sunken ship. He sleeps more, eats less, talks little.

As a result, he’s just about bored out of his skull for most waking hours.

Kylo returns every now and then, bearing gifts. Strange odds and ends which he presents like great, wondrous things. Kylo presents him a fork like it’s the most precious thing in the world and is then scandalized when Hux uses it to fish out preserved fruits from whatever can of food is to serve as the meal of the day.

“Your hair,” Kylo says slowly. 

“What about it?” Hux says angrily. He’s heard everything under the sun about it.  _ As bright as the sun  _ or  _ like the sweetest oranges  _ or  _ Brendol Hux’s signature  _ or  _ such an obvious tell of his illegitimacy. _

Kylo’s fingers trace his temple, hesitantly petting at his hair. Hux shudders at the texture of the webbing.  “Some of it has gone white.” He looks up, pupils just thin slits. “That isn’t normal, is it?”

Hux sighs and pushes Kylo’s hand away. “You’ll have to let me go, or I’ll die. I’ve told you this before.”

“And why exactly would you die?” Kylo asks. He leans close, tilting his head. He sniffs loudly, mouth parted ever so slightly. He's like a dog and certainly stinks like one too. A wet dog. "Nothing has changed about your scent since last time. You couldn't have caught anything since. There's no one to catch anything  _ from." _

Hux slumps and curls up, but cannot fight the cold that comes over him. "It just shows you how little you know about humans at all."

*

His human's words follow Kylo through the days. Haunting his searches of sunken vessels. Clouding his mind during the raids upon human ships.

Kylo is awarded some dangling strings of jewelry, beads of various colors and make. It's a pretty thing, he thinks, one that will look prettier around Hux's neck.

He returns to his hoard, excited about his latest addition. Kylo claws himself onto his perch. "Hux, try this one."

But Hux does not speak. He does not even move from beneath his piles of blankets.

"Hux?" Kylo drags himself along the durasteel floor, abandoning his little treat.

Kylo reaches out and places a hand upon the bundle of cloth. Even through the layers, he can feel the heat radiate from Hux's skin. "You're burning up," he says, with a click. That is abnormal for humans, isn't it? He tugs at the fabrics, pulling them away from Hux's fingers.

The human is curled tightly, his knees pressed against his chest. More of his hair has lost its beautiful coloring, turning to the white of dead coral. His eyes flicker open, but their former bright green is glazed over.

This isn't normal. This isn't good.

And Kylo knows too little about humans to do anything to reverse the damage.

"Hux," Kylo says, voice just above a rumble. "Hey. You need to wake up."

But his human only moans softly, whimpering in pain. It's so very weak and sad, utterly unlike the frustrating man Kylo had come to know. When Hux's eyes open, just for a brief moment, there is no recognition in them. Nothing at all.

It’s like staring into the eyes of a dying fish.

Kylo does not like it at all. He crawls around his hoard, pawing through the piles and piles of his stashes, until he finds what he is looking for. He pulls the oxygen net away from his other treasures.

His hands shaking, he wraps the net around Hux and tugs him towards the water.

When Kylo begins to swim, Hux whimpers. All around them, the water is cold and still, with only Kylo to churn it. But he ignores Hux’s momentary discomfort—he has to—and propels himself to Snoke’s hoard, within the same sunken human ship.

Snoke’s hoard is underwater. Snoke is perched along an old, crumbling throne, tentacles writhing against the stone. He is old, grey, and scarred from many ancient battles. 

“Master,” Kylo says, desperation coating his every word like a film. “Please help him.”

Snoke extends a hand and the currents tug Hux away from Kylo. His human looks like little more than a doll in Snoke’s hands. He tilts the limp body of Hux this way and that, staring at him with intensive eyes.

Then Snoke laughs, the raucous sound echoing throughout the room.

“My apprentice,” Snoke croons, a smile upon his face. “Your pet is not fully human, but also not fully of the ocean. It looks as if the incompatibility will be the end of him.”

“Master…?” Kylo says. “What do you mean?” Dread pools in the pit of his stomach.

“Look at him,” Snoke says. Through the net, he tugs at Hux’s head of white hair. The human does not wake up, even after such rough pulls. “A successful union between a human and a selkie.”

Snoke squeezes and pinches Hux, leaving pale flesh bruised. “What a disgrace to both of your kinds.”

Then he lets go, Hux’s body drifting to the floor of the room, still wrapped in the oxygen net. He is so still and so silent that Kylo almost thinks he has died already.

Hux’s eyes open, pale green looking at Kylo curiously for a brief moment before shutting once again.

The human doesn’t look like more than that. Kylo had found him naked, without one of those coats that turned them from human flesh to that of an ocean creature. But a mutt…

Would Hux even be able to shed his human skin and put on the pelt of a seal?

“Master,” says Kylo, desperate to reach out and pull Hux into his arms, simply hold him close and maybe pet his hair. “Please help him.” 

Of all the years of serving Snoke’s pod, this would be Kylo’s first ever request.

But Snoke breaks out into laughter once again, like even the thought of it amused him. “My dear apprentice,” he says, brandishing all his teeth in a smile. “We do not  _ help _ those who come from the lands above us. When have they ever helped  _ us?” _

“All their trash, they put into our oceans. They take more fish than the cycles can handle. They leak waste and dump their filth,” Snoke raves, his tentacles slapping against his throne. Each word is a rebuttal, each word is a slap.

Kylo Ren wishes he still wore his mask. “Master, if he is… a halfling, then does he not belong half to us? Please, help him. Help him.” He all but begs, groveling at the foot of Snoke’s throne.

Snoke whips him across the face with one of his tentacles, electricity coursing through Kylo’s body for one painful eternity. Kylo sinks to the ship floor, gravel scraping along his scales.

When it abides, Snoke is laughing once again. “Beg more,” Snoke says, grinning in the half-life. “How amusing you can be, when you try, oh heir apparent to Darth Vader.”

Kylo stares openly, his brows furrowed low.

Betrayal tugs at his heart, hidden beneath layers and layers of dark clothing and buried feelings. He had always, always relied upon Snoke for guidance and for aid.

For him to be abandoned now, and so suddenly, he can hardly comprehend it, after all he had done and all that had been done to him.

It makes rage swim in the pit of his stomach, like the storms that churn above the ocean, in the lands of the void. When lightning bursts from him, like a manifestation of all that glorious chaos of the above, no one is more surprised than Snoke himself.

Snoke gasps and gapes, blood flowing from his open mouth in little puffs. “You…” is all Snoke manages before finally, finally falling still.

Dead.

Snoke is dead.

It feels as if the chokehold of a human net has been ripped from his neck—swiftly and all at once.

“Hux,” Kylo says, swimming to his abandoned human.

The human stirs, eyes half open. “How?” he croaks, muffled through the cold waters.

Kylo shakes his head. He doesn’t know—can’t quite think, not when adrenaline courses through him.

Where Snoke’s bursts of electricity had come from within him and the hairs that lined his tentacles, the electricity that Kylo produced had no such plausible explanation.

Then it hits him.

He had killed Snoke, had killed the head of the pod. When Snoke’s body is discovered, Kylo would be hunted. His head would be torn from his shoulders, his skull cleaned of skin and flesh and hair and placed on a pike to ward off trespassers and other potential traitors.

“We have to leave,” Hux says, as if hearing Kylo’s very thoughts.

Kylo gathers the edges of the oxygen net and ties them to his belt. 

*

Kylo takes little time to take with him some essentials to their journey. Cans of food, a little bottle of water, strange fabrics--all join Hux in the prison of the net.

He does not know how long they traveled, drifting in and out of sleep. 

When they finally stop moving, Kylo drags them into a cave. Hux is dragged along an outcropping of rock. The air pocket smells of old fish and salt, always salt. 

Kylo unties the net and picks up a random can of food, his hands shaking. He pries it open, utterly ignoring the tab, before handing it to Hux. “You have to eat.”

Hux takes it and puts it aside. “I’m not hungry.”

“You need to keep your energy up,” Kylo says. His eyes are dark, pupils swallowing that gold flecked brown of his eyes as they grow bigger with his focus. He’s like a cat. The thought is ridiculous and comes out of nowhere and brings him to laughter.

Kylo looks at him oddly, placing a pale hand on Hux’s forehead. “You’re so cold,” he mutters.

The rugs and curtains wrapped around Hux must be doing something, even if that something is looking pretty on his angular form. They’d stayed dry within the safety of Kylo’s strange net, but dry does not necessarily mean warm or comforting.

Hux does not really react, but for the slight downturn of his mouth. He can’t help but frown. “I wonder why,” Hux says dryly.

“I will go hunt,” Kylo says, smoothing his hand over the top of Hux’s surely unruly hair. “Stay.” His eyes are dark, deep, dangerous. The only part of him Hux can make out in the half-light of the bioluminescent creatures that live along the cave walls. Truthfully, his vision has been blurring for days, with black creeping in on all sides.

“It isn’t like I can really go anywhere,” Hux can’t help but snipe.

Kylo pets him again, more carefully. His webbed fingers trace the sharp slope of Hux’s cheekbones. “Wait for me,” he says before he goes, leaving Hux to wonder just  _ what  _ the mer sees in  _ him _ to handle him so carefully.

*

Hux isn’t sure for how long he sleeps, only that he wakes— _ fully _ wakes—when Kylo returns from his hunt, teeth and hands bloodied, the body of a massacred shark upon the floor of the cave.

The creature had just about been torn apart by the mer’s barbaric spear. Its cold, unseeing eyes seeming to stare right through Hux.

He can’t fight the shiver that runs right through him, chilling him to the bone, despite the layers and layers of fabric swathing him like a cocoon. 

“Is it cannibalism?” Hux asks him. “To eat the flesh of another sea dweller?”

Kylo looks at him oddly. “I can hardly eat you, can I?” And then he launches into his meal, eating directly from the carcass. Gore gets all over Kylo’s face, little bits and pieces clinging to his long, tangled hair.

“You’re disgusting,” Hux says, without any bite. Whatever appetite that may have built in him vanishes after Kylo’s ravenous display.

Kylo looks up, proud of it. “I’m a  _ monster _ ,” he says, relishing the taste of his words.

Hux shakes his head from where he lies on the floor. The rocks scrape against his cheek. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’ve met humans twice as monstrous as you.”

When Kylo grins, he bears his teeth. “But who do the humans sacrifice their treasures to?”

Hux doesn’t look away. He puffs up, indigent. “You clearly have no idea about the lives of humans. There are only a few who believe that the sacrifices do anything at all.”

“Enlighten me then.” Kylo’s tail smacks the floor of the cave.  _ Thump. Thump.  _ Like an overeager dog.

“There’s… two factions, really,” Hux says. “A religious sort led by fanatics that believe in appeasing the sea—”

“—Makes sense,” Kylo cuts.

“Yes, well, they don’t worship  _ you  _ or your kind. Just the concept of a goddess of the sea, who they assume has power over all the oceans.” Hux pauses, waits a beat, but there are no more interruptions. “And there is a group led by the head of the military. He— He seeks to eradicate all mer and is willing to pay any cost to get it.”

Kylo leans his chin on the cradle of his hands, leaning closer. “Yes, but just where do  _ you _ come in?”

Hux scowls, but an itching sensation takes him over. He doubles over, coughing into the palms of his hands, scrunching his eyes shut. 

When he pulls his hands away, they are slick and salty, warm from his dripping blood.

“The head of the military is my father,” Hux says slowly.

“And who was your mother?” Kylo asks, taking a hold of Hux’s hands and scenting the rapidly cooling blood.

“She was a selkie that he entrapped and forced into a life of servitude.” Every word is hollow and well practiced but no less horrific. “My father threw away the coat my mother left to me. Without it, I’m incomplete.”

He pulls away from Kylo and falls into another coughing fit.

*

Kylo continues their journey with a weaker Hux, who sports more and more white hair as time goes by. When they make their camps, Kylo pries more information from Hux, about the human world.

He learns things like the other side of the ocean, the void, is not endless sky. There are lands that separate the many seas, filled with strange plants and animals and  _ structures _ that he can hardly imagine. He learns that humans are truly, truly weak, needing water to live, but unable to subsist off of the ocean. He learns that he likes Hux, likes talking to someone who talks back and insults him and calls him names.

Kylo misses belonging to a pod. He tells Hux this as he scours the insides of a fallen ship. In all of their journeys, Kylo has not come across anything even remotely like the coat that Hux had lost.

“Why can’t you just join a new one?” Hux asks, his voice grating.

“I left one and killed the head of another,” Kylo admits. He runs his fingers through a pile of miscellaneous objects that had survived the ship’s crash. He comes away with a piece of glass, holding it to his eye. “I don’t think that another pod will be quick to welcome one like me.”

Especially not when he drags a human in an oxygen net around, everywhere he goes.

“Why did you leave your first pod?”

Kylo shrugs. “My mother was— _ is _ ?—its head. She wouldn’t tell me anything about my father,” he says. He discards the piece of glass, deeming it useless. “She kept telling me she would introduce me to him when I was ready.” He slaps his tail against the floor of the ship in anger. “And she never did.”

“I wish I could have seen my mother one last time,” Hux says, words seeped in misery. He falls into an uneasy sleep soon after, leaving Kylo alone to scavenge.

But Hux’s words linger against his skin, like a film of oil.

He has not seen his mother in years.

*

“Just where are we going?” Hux asks for perhaps the thousandth time. He is hungry, surprisingly, but they have not stopped in what feels like ages. The syrup from the canned peaches he’d eaten hours ago lingers in his mouth.

Kylo swims with purpose, not even inspecting the strange things the lie on the floor of the ocean like he usually does. He practically vibrates with energy now, face alight with a smile.

It’s creepy, and Hux shudders, wondering just what has come over the mer.

“Do you trust me?” Kylo asks.

“Well, I still don’t know why you’ve kept me alive this long,” Hux says dryly. “So I do hope you aren’t going to use me in some strange ritual.”

“You worry,” Kylo says. “Don’t worry anymore.”

Which is much easier said than done.

Hux sleeps off and on and every time he wakes, they are still moving. He cannot tell just where they are or how far from where they’ve started. All the ocean looks the same: blue, blue, blue, with sunken ships and with strange fish everywhere he could look.

And none of it is a key to him figuring out his location, so Hux doesn’t even bother to try, not when sleep lingers over him and threatens to pull him under at any moment.

Hux gives up and gives up and gives up and  _ feels  _ himself grow weak.

*

“We’re here.”

Kylo’s hushed, almost awed words pulls Hux out from another bout of sleep.

A tiny sunken ship sits amongst a coral reef. Bright oranges and pinks grow above, around, within it, looking like just about anything else they’ve seen.

Hux tells him as much.

Kylo swats him with his tail. “This is… this was where my mother’s pod lived when I left,” he says. He sounds almost embarrassed. “Do you think they’re still here?”

Hux rolls his eyes. “There’s one way to find out.”

Kylo swims closer, dragging Hux along. The door to the ship is open, always open, and Kylo lets himself in.

It’s as he had remembered. White walls. The members of the pod kept nests close together, hoards pushed together. All very communal. All very much still there.

“Ben.”

Kylo stills, his knuckles turning white within the loops of the net.

Hux struggles within its hold, turning himself around to look at who had spoken. The mer is small, very small, but the scales along her tail bear the same colors and patterns as Kylo’s. She is old, with lined skin and grey hair put up into careful braids.

“Mother,” Kylo says, choking on the word. “Help us. Help  _ him. _ ”

*

The mermaid’s name is Leia, the mother of Kylo. She’d named him Ben at birth, but he’d taken another name when he left her pod. Leia braids Kylo’s hair carefully, away from his face. Her hands linger on him, though, like she cannot believe that he has returned to her.

Kylo leans into her every touch, desperate for every crumb of affection.

“You brought a human,” says Leia tiredly. “You take after me.”

Hux learns of a sordid love affair. A young, politically inclined mer and a half drowned sailor human. The result of such an affair just so happened to be Kylo himself.

“We’re alike,” Kylo says to Hux sourly. And then, to his mother, “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Leia sighs helplessly. “How could I look you in the eye and tell you that your human father left, to be with his own kind?”

“Where are all the others?” Kylo demands. “You’re not alone.” Then, “Are you?”

Leia places a hand on his elbow. “They’re out scavenging,” she says. “We’re a small pod. Someone always stays home, just to keep an eye on things.”

Kylo relaxes again, already more at ease.

Hux shuts his eyes, thinking perhaps he can get another nap out of all of this. Perhaps, if he tries, he will dream of his mother and her rough, dry hands. Of her long, unbound hair and the tears that so often ran down her cheeks. He could not quite remember her face, but he could imagine features and pretend.

“What’s wrong with him?” Leia asks.

“He’s— he’s not just human,” Kylo rumbles. The two mer drag Hux to one of the nests. Kylo sets him down and curls around him possessively. “His mother was a selkie. His coat is missing.”

Leia’s fingers cut through the loops of the net and touch a strand of Hux’s hair. “He looks like one of the Arkanisians.”

Kylo surges forwards, practically enveloping his mother. “Do you think they could—”

Leia presses her lips to a fine line. “We can try.”

*

Leia’s pod comes together along with the selkies of Arkanis. Every selkie seal is ruddy, with bright eyes and round bellies. Some shift from seal to human and Kylo can see the resemblances immediately. All of them are red haired, with sea colored eyes and fair, delicate features.

The selkies bark at each other, as if deliberating. Some pet Hux through the oxygen net, like some sad little creature. Hux doesn’t seem to mind. He’s too incoherent to protest, now waking for only minutes at a time.

(His insults and rebuttals, all aimed at Kylo, are as sharp and biting as ever.)

Rey, the daughter of Kylo’s uncle, apparently, holds a spear tightly, her face screwed tight in a determined expression. “How could someone be so cruel?” Her scales are a pale beige and white, splotchy with new growth. She is so very young and he has missed all of her life.

Finn, a new member, comforts her, pressing his head to her own. His scales are a geometric black and white, long red scratches running down his side.

“We will scour every corner of the seas,” a selkie says. It’s unclear if it’s an order or a promise or a pinch of both. “We will have that coat. We will not lose one of our own, not after learning the fate of his mother.”

“Oh, unlucky Alma,” they cry.

Hux mutters something beneath his breath and curls away from open, curious hands.

It only makes the human more dear to him, Kylo thinks with a twinge. His human  _ should not _ be so dear. 

But Kylo loves him and he hates it. Hates feeling so vulnerable. Hates seeing any future with Hux slowly slipping between his fingers.

Leia holds Kylo’s hand between two of hers. “We’ll save him,” she swears, conviction in her words.

*

It isn’t Kylo who finds Hux’s coat as much as he would have liked for it to be him. But it isn’t one of the selkies either. 

Poe Dameron, a child of one of Leia’s oldest pod members, retrieves the coat from a human trunk that had sunk and carried and stuck between two bleached, lifeless coral reefs. His scales are a rather unfortunate shade of bright orange, standing out everywhere.

Kylo takes the coat from Poe’s willing fingers. The fur is short and red, warm to the touch. Like it is alive.

And in a way, it  _ is _ .

Hux stirs when he approaches, opening his glassy eyes. He’s been drained of color, pale eyes, bloodless lips, and bleached, lifeless hair.

“Hold your breath,” Kylo tells him before pulling the oxygen net open and away. He wraps the pelt around Hux’s narrow shoulders.

One second, Hux is in the shape of a man and in the next, he is a seal. He lets out a squeak, black button nose twitching. The other selkies dive in close, pressing their noses to his pelt in greeting. 

Kylo waits and watches, relief slowly sinking in.

Only then does he grow aware of his mother at his side, her hand upon his arm, tracing the patterns along the heavy black clothing Snoke had given him long ago. 

“Where will you go now?” Leia asks. She carefully guards her words, but Kylo can still hear hope leaking through. 

“If… my father was a human,” Kylo asks, quietly, “does that mean I too can…”

“Be human?” Leia finishes, her smile tight. 

Kylo glares at her, shaking his head. “Never that,” he mutters. But something close. To walk on those lands that Hux had told him of, to see the side of the void that he did not know existed before. 

To permanently be out of reach from the hands of his former pod members, both Leia’s pod and Snoke’s own.

“I’ll miss you,” Leia says. 

“I know.” Kylo watches as Hux swims, barking right back at his fellow selkies. He’s smaller than the rest and his coat is less vibrant. Hux is his treasure, more than any hoard Kylo could amass at the bottom of the sea. Kylo would go wherever Hux wanted, follow him onto dry land and beyond, seeing what only land dwellers had seen before.

*

*

*

In a lighthouse, far, far away, live two men. They had arrived, one sudden day, on the outskirts of Coruscant with nothing but the clothes on their backs. 

There are stories--little more than rumors, really--about how the two of them had ended up in Coruscant. Some say the dark haired man is a prince, run away from home with one of the servants. Some say that the red haired man had been cursed, something awful, and that's why he is so pale and thin and just why the other man dotes on him so.

Other still say that they rose out of the ocean, fully formed, to take up the jobs of lighthouse keepers, to guide ships to shore. 

No one really knows if any of those rumors hold even a grain of truth.

The two men live out their quiet lives, so often seen gazing out into the open sea, their hands twined together, fingers interlocked. 

*

 


End file.
